Rattling cages not the wisest course for Cuthbert’s Cork

Any hope Cork had of catching the sleeping dog unawares has disappeared with their criticism of Mayo’s streetwise tactics

IT’S been another weird and wonderful week in south-west Kerry.

We were distracted enough by all the carry-on out on Sceilig Mhíchíl that we nearly forgot for a while that the green and gold are back in Croke Park for a championship match this weekend for the first time since the game of all games against Dublin 11 months ago.

Now that Luke Skywalker and all his mates from Star Wars Episode 7 have taken themselves to a galaxy far away from Skellig Rock, we’ve got time to think again of our football stock, which the poem tells us, ‘can’t be bought or sold’, unlike a few days on a sacred site off the Kerry coast might be.

Whatever of Kerry, making a case for a Cork victory in Croke Park tomorrow feels like the weaving of a fantasy beyond anything from George Lucas’ or Disney’s imagination.

Nothing I have seen or heard since the Munster final capitulation against Kerry can convince me Cork can surprise us against a Mayo team who appear to have their measure.

Even the benefit of coming into to a big game unburdened by expectation appears to have been taken away from Cork thanks to Brian Cuthbert’s and Ronan McCarthy’s decision to rattle their opponent’s cage with talk of Mayo’s ‘streetwise’ nature.

Irrespective of the truth or otherwise of their statements, as pre-match tactics go it was unwise of the Cork mentors to engage in chatter about the referee and about how he might handle Mayo’s aggression in the tackle.

The reality is that Mayo are second only to Dublin in their ability to strip possession in the tackle and whatever the antics Kevin McLoughlin and Cillian O’Connor might engage in when stopping defenders from making restarts it is nothing an experienced referee like Cormac Reilly hasn’t seen before.

Any hope Cork had of catching the sleeping dog unawares has just disappeared and it has created a negative vibe about the game that didn’t need to be there.

There were, of course, a few positives from Cork’s canter against Sligo last weekend. Colm O’Driscoll and Mark Collins did what was asked of them to a tee, with O’Driscoll retreating right back to the ‘D’ whenever Cork lost possession and Collins doing likewise often enough to give a bit more protection to their full-back line. This in turn created loads of space for Paul Kerrigan to stretch his legs on the counter attack.

Such a tactic might work again tomorrow but in Keith Higgins, Chris Barrett and Kerrigan’s likely marker, Colm Boyle, Mayo have three defenders who can track Kerrigan’s movement with ease. More worryingly, in retreating, O’Driscoll will be inviting the best wing-back in the game, Lee Keegan, on to a Cork defence that coughed up ten goal chances and conceded four when the sides met earlier this year.

What then can Cork do? There may be clues in how Roscommon suffocated Mayo in the Connacht semi-final. Putting as many men behind the ball as Roscommon did is not an alien tactic to Cork, but if you go back nearly a year and a half to the 2013 league slugfest in Tralee, it is obvious how ill-suited such an approach is to the Cork psyche.

And that’s without factoring in Croke Park where the men-behind-the-ball tactic often flounders on a pitch that will play a lot faster than anything either side have experienced so far in 2014.

Much like they did against Dublin at this stage last year, Cork have enough players to pose Mayo a few problems tomorrow. They must get a good start though. Quite apart from any conventional reasons, a good start is essential so that players who might not entirely be buying into the latest Cuthbert plan don’t get discouraged too early.

Players can live with growing pains and teething problems for a while but only for as long as they believe that the leadership has a long-term plan. Rumblings of discontent are nothing new to Cork football, but if a few key players lose their sense of conviction, the whole thing could unravel very quickly. That is what’s at stake for Cork tomorrow.

There is just as much at stake for Mayo in another one of their All-Ireland-or-bust seasons. The big existential questions will be asked of the four-time Connacht champions at a later stage, but, in the meantime, Mayo should advance after being taken out of their comfort zone sporadically by Cork.

Although Eamonn Fitzmaurice hasn’t gone as far as setting up a two-mile exclusion zone around Fitzgerald stadium, his Kerry team are beginning to attract the same type of intrigue that surrounded the filming of Star Wars on Sceilig Mhichíl this week.

What on earth is going on in there? People are also waking up the fact that Fitzmaurice is a seriously good manager. As inscrutable as Yoda and as ruthlessly efficient as Darth Vader, the force is strong in this one.

How good are they really? Surely they can’t be as good as they looked in the Munster final? But I thought we’d seen the last of them! Kerry have got people thinking again. And worrying, too.

If Fitzmaurice can deliver more of the meticulous and imaginative game-plans that are becoming his trademark, then it is only a matter of time before he takes on the aura assumed by Jim McGuinness in 2012, when teams feared the tactical acumen of Donegal’s management as much as their players.

For their part, Alan Mulholland and his young apprentices will be hoping Kerry’s excellence against Cork was a one-off, a product of Cork’s ineptitude rather than an early sign that the empire is readying itself to strike back against the conventional wisdom that the glory days are over for a while.

The suspicion, however, is that Kerry are a team growing in confidence and some of their younger players are better than a lot of people expected them to be. As one supporter leaving Páirc Uí Chaoimh last month remarked, ‘If this is what transition looks like, I hope we never get to where we’re going!’

After playing some bewilderingly smart football last month, it would be unwise of Kerry to lower their defences against a team with better scoring potential than most teams out there.

Shane Walsh, Michael Lundy, Danny Cummins and Paul Varley will test Kerry’s appetite for incessant running. But provided the match-ups are right and Kerry will be able to call on their increasingly impressive on-field adaptability to play the game on their own terms into the second half.

- Aguisín: Keep an eye out for a bunch of kids from the Shannon Gaels GAA club in Queens playing at half-time in both games tomorrow. Founded in 2002, the Gaels, fresh from a very successful Continental Youth Championships last weekend, have embarked on one of the most ambitious field development projects in the New York area.

Their Field of Dreams project at Frank Golden Park, Queens, will cost an estimated €4.5m to deliver and at least 50% of this must be raised by the club themselves. It is a huge challenge, but one which they believe is necessary to cater for the club’s 19 teams and a membership that is growing at a rate of 150% annually. With over 500 yellow-clad club members attending tomorrow, they certainly won’t go unnoticed. Further information at shannongaels.org